” The number of VA facilities under investigation after complaints about falsified records and treatment delays has more than doubled in recent days, the Office of Inspector General at the Veterans Affairs Department said late Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for the IG’s office said 26 facilities were being investigated nationwide. Acting Inspector General Richard Griffin told a Senate committee last week that at least 10 new allegations about manipulated waiting times and other problems had surfaced since reports of problems at the Phoenix VA hospital came to light last month.

The expanded investigations come as President Barack Obama’s choice to help carry out reforms at the Veterans Affairs Department was set to travel to Phoenix to meet with staff at the local VA office amid mounting pressure to overhaul the beleaguered agency.

Obama announced last week that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rob Nabors would be assigned to the VA after allegations of delayed care that may have led to patient deaths and a cover-up by top administrators in Phoenix. Similar claims have been reported at VA facilities in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Georgia, Missouri, Texas, Florida and elsewhere.”

” Politico reported on Saturday that Doug Smith, the Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary, who exchanged a series of emails with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe about GreenTech Automotive, has landed a new job with MWW, a high powered Washington D.C. public relations firm headed up by a major donor to McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign.

According to Politico, Smith “is joining MWW public affairs as Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Washington office.” Acting DHS Secretary Rand Beers told Politico “Douglas has played a key role in leading DHS’s efforts in working with the private sector and strengthening the collaboration between the department and all of its private stakeholders from aviation security to intellectual property and all points in between.”

Smith has been heavily criticized by Republicans for playing an inappropriate role as McAuliffe’s advocate within the Department of Homeland Security. McAuliffe’s company, GreenTech Automotive, which he served as chairman from 2010 to 2012 and chairman emeritus since, is currently under investigation by the Inspector General’s Office of the DHS for inappropriate influence in the granting of temporary green cards and permanent visas within the DHS’s EB-5 foreign investors program.”

The revolving door between the federal bureaucracy and corporate America spins out of control and the average citizen gets screwed in the process . Whether it’s journalists on the White House staff or golden parachute jobs in the private sector for past helpful government bureaucrats , the old boy’s network takes care of their own .

” Delaware state officials have told Congress that they likely destroyed the computer records that would show when and how often they accessed Christine O’Donnell’s personal tax records and acknowledged that a newspaper article was used as the sole justification for snooping into the former GOP Senate candidate’s tax history.

” The U.S. Park Police has lost track of thousands of handguns, rifles and machine guns in what a government watchdog agency concluded is the latest example of mismanagement on a police force trusted to protect millions of visitors to the city’s iconic monuments.

There is no indication that police guns got into the hands of criminals, but the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that the Park Police might not know if they had. In a scathing report, the authors said there is “credible evidence of conditions that would allow for theft and misuse of firearms, and the ability to conceal the fact if weapons were missing.”

“Commanders up to and including the chief of police have a lackadaisical attitude toward firearms management,” wrote Mary L. Kendall, the deputy inspector general. “Historical evidence indicates that the indifference is a product of years of inattention to administrative detail.”

Investigators took an unusually harsh tone in part because they said similar problems found in 2008 and 2009 were never fixed — a symptom of “the decade-long theme of inaction and indifference” of top Park Police managers. The Washington Post obtained an advance copy of the report.”

These people ( the Feds ) are supposed to be the ones that we should trust with firearms while we lowly citizens are to give up our own ? You must be joking .

” U.S. special operations forces who participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden were in uniform and wearing nametags during a CIA award ceremony attended by the writer of the film “Zero Dark Thirty,” a Pentagon inspector general’s report said Friday.

The report, however, omits a number of revelations disclosed in an early draft that was made public more than a week ago, including that then-CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed the name of the raid commander during his speech at the agency’s June 2011 event.

It also no longer includes revelations that the Pentagon’s top intelligence official, Michael Vickers, divulged the name of an individual involved in the bin Laden raid to the filmmakers.”

If this administration can’t even be trusted to protect the privacy of our Spec-ops troops what chance does the private citizen stand ? With this gangster government it’s all about the politics and looking good . The welfare of others , no matter who they might be is of no concern whatsoever .

” The IG report concludes that it did not identify any instances when sensitive special operations tactics or techniques were provided to filmmakers. But it also found that commandos involved in the raid were readily identifiable during the CIA ceremony.

“We were unable to identify any precautionary measures that were taken to protect the identity of operators that attended this event,” the report said. It added that, according to a commander at the event, the commandos “were in the front row, front, left side, prominently on display for everybody.”

This is shameful political behavior from a shameful Chicago thug administration .

” The State Department whistleblower is Aurelia Fedenisn. She worked in the department’s inspector general’s office until her retirement in December 2012. According to USA Today, she has sought protection as an official whistleblower after the State Department directly threatened her, once at her home. It threatened her with criminal charges when she turned over documents to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) showing evidence that the department had watered down her report, in which she alleged that the department at the highest levels had scuttled eight investigations into a range of criminal wrongdoing.

Dallas lawyer Damon Mathias, who represents Fedenisn, said Fedenisn hired him after two diplomatic security agents spoke in a threatening manner to her teenage children at her home in a Virginia suburb of Washington. The agents arrived at the home to talk to Fedenisn about documents Fedenisn had given to Cruz and told the teens that they demanded to speak to their mom immediately, Mathias said.”

” Things for the State Department just keep getting worse. First we learned from CBS News that Department official covered up and interfered with inspector general investigations of sexual misconduct, including the soliciation of prostitutes by an ambassador. Then we learned those sexual solicitations involved minors. Now, we’re learning State Department officials covered up the shooting of four Hondurans. More from the New York Post:

A top State Department official stymied investigators trying to get to the bottom of four killings in Honduras involving DEA agents and local police — yet another revelation from internal memos leaked by a whistleblower claiming a pattern of coverups.

The incident ended in the deaths of two pregnant women and two men last year, after Honduran national police opened fire from a State Department-owned helicopter on a small boat.”

” CBS News has uncovered documents that show the State Department may have covered up allegations of illegal and inappropriate behavior within their ranks.

The Diplomatic Security Service, or the DSS, is the State Department’s security force, charged with protecting the secretary of state and U.S. ambassadors overseas and with investigating any cases of misconduct on the part of the 70,000 State Department employees worldwide.

CBS News’ John Miller reports that according to an internal State Department Inspector General’s memo, several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off. The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples.”

We find it absolutely amazing just how much scandalous behavior on the part of the Obama administration has come to light in such a short period of time . All of a sudden , as the scales of blind obeisance have fallen from the eyes of our “gatekeepers” in the MSM , all manner of shameful , embarrassing and criminal behavior has been brought to light .

Just imagine , if the partisanship and bias had been absent from the start the American people could have been spared the past five years of misery , deception and lies.

” A warehouse maintained by contractors for the Environmental Protection Agency contained secret rooms full of exercise equipment, televisions and couches, according to an internal audit.

EPA’s inspector general found contractors used partitions, screens and piled up boxes to hide the rooms from security cameras in the 70,000 square-foot building located in Landover, Md. The warehouse — used for inventory storage — is owned by the General Services Administration and leased to the EPA for about $750,000 per year.

” In August of 2009 the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agreed to a labor contract with the National Treasury Employees Union. But Article 4 “Protections Against Prohibited Personnel Practices” contains sections that seem to indicate that in targeting organizations applying for tax-exempt status, IRS agents were required to break the terms of their union contract.”

Another reason to fire them , as if anymore were needed . This is another example of why government employees have no business being unionized .

” Section 8 of the preamble states that “Employees should be protected against arbitrary action, personal favoritism, or coercion for partisan political purposes; and prohibited from using their official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election or a nomination for election.”

While this contract was agreed to in Aug. 2009, by March 2010, IRS agents were clearly being directed to target organizations based on their political persuasion in an apparent effort to silence people who didn’t agree with the administration.”

Why should the civilian employees of the government enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining when the one department of the government that is constitutionally authorized ( the military ) has no such right ?

” A broader look at the values espoused in IRS agreement with the National Treasury Employees Union reveals a list of things Americans want government to stand for, but in light of recent incidents it reads more like a Saturday Night Live skit.

The introduction includes a short list of six IRS Values:

• Honesty and Integrity: We uphold the public trust in all that we do; we are honest and forthright in all of our internal and external dealings.

• Respect: We treat each colleague, employee and taxpayer with dignity and respect.

• Continuous Improvement: We seek to perform the best that we can today, while embracing change, so that we can perform even better in the future.

• Inclusion: We embrace diversity of background, experience, and perspective.

• Openness and Collaboration: We share information and collaborate, recognizing that we are a team.

• Personal Accountability: We take responsibility for our actions and decisions and learn and grow from our achievements and mistakes. [emphasis added]“

All employees of all branches of government , whether they be federal , state , county or municipal should be subjected to the same employment rules as the various branches of the military are . If you want to live off of the public dime then you should have to take the job with predetermined benefits , salary , job security and possibility of advancement .

There should be a predetermined ( by the various government budgetary departments ) pay/benefits scale as the military utilizes and when you sign on to the job it is a take it or leave it proposition … No negotiation with the taxpayer’s money . Job x receives salary x , job y receives salary y , no ifs ands or buts … If the prospective employee does not like the pay scale they are free to find a job in the private sector just like the rest of us producers .

It is time to enact a major draw-down of the looters and eliminate the power of the public employee unions . There is something inherently corrupt with unions negotiating salaries and benefits with the very politicians whose pockets they line year after year .

As long as government employment , union membership and it’s clout continue to grow and maintain it’s symbiotic relationship with the Democratic party we should expect nothing but partisanship from the State .

” The House Oversight Committee is holding another hearing on the IRS — but not one dealing with the agency’s targeting of conservative groups.

The panel, led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), will hear on Thursday from Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration about “excessive spending” at IRS conferences.

“The IRS is an agency in crisis,” Issa said in a statement. “The American people expect that their tax-dollars will be used responsibly and not for financing lavish hotel suites and entertainment for government employees. The Oversight Committee will examine these egregious abuses of the public trust and an IRS culture that shuns accountability.” “

The entire federal government is one giant culture of corruption the time for “reform” is well overdue .

” South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy showed up to Wednesday’s House hearing on the Internal Revue Service scandal in a fighting mood (as noted here on TheBlaze) and he only became more fired up as the day wore on.

“If there’s inappropriate conduct being done on your watch in the IRS,” Rep. Gowdy said, “then that inappropriate conduct can last as long as the inspector general’s investigation lasts.”

The congressman’s remarks were in response to former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman saying he didn’t stop the agency’s political targeting of conservative groups because the IG was looking into it.”

” Members of the House of Representatives are scheduled to vote Thursday to repeal all of Obamacare. Given that the House voted to repeal the law last year, some commentators and observers have questioned the need for another repeal vote.

However, the scandals coming to light over the last week perfectly make the case for why Congress must eradicate the law from the statute books.

On Friday, the Internal Revenue Service finally disclosed that it had spent years targeting tea party and other conservative groups, delaying their applications for non-profit status and giving those applications additional scrutiny — solely because of those groups’ political beliefs.

Also on Friday, The Washington Post revealed that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius personally asked health industry groups to contribute to Enroll America, a pro-Obamacare front group working to “educate” the public about the law’s supposed benefits.

While we don’t yet know all the details about these scandals, we do know that the IRS grossly abused its power at a time when Obamacare grants it massive new authority. The Treasury Department’s Inspector General has said Obamacare represents “the largest set of tax law changes in 20 years,” with at least 42 provisions adding to or amending the tax code.”

” Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general’s report obtained by The Associated Press that seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner.

But on June 29, 2011, Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, learned at a meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog’s report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with “Tea Party,” ”Patriot” or “9/12 Project” in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report says.

Among the other revelations, on Aug. 4, 2011, staffers in the IRS’ Rulings and Agreements office “held a meeting with chief counsel so that everyone would have the latest information on the issue.”

On Jan, 25, 2012, the criteria for flagging suspect groups was changed to, “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement,” the report says.”

Changing the criteria from “tea party” and “patriot” to “limiting government” and “educating on the Constitution/Bill of Rights” is an improvement ?

We are in the hands of a amateurish tyrant and the Chicago way has now become the Washington way .

” Today the Department of Justice inspector general released a report on potential Labor secretary nominee Tom Perez’s DOJ Civil Rights Division. The timing of the release to coincide with his nomination was certainly accidental, because the report paints a damning portrait of the DOJ unit he managed.

” Indeed, two career Voting Section attorneys told us that, even if the Department had infinite resources, they still would not have supported the filing of the Noxubee case because it was contrary to the purpose of the Voting Rights Act, which was to ensure that minorities who had historically been the victims of discrimination could exercise the right to vote.” ”

Additionally, some of these individuals, including one current manager, admitted to us that, while they believed that the text of the Voting Rights Act is race-neutral and applied to all races, they did not believe the Voting Section should pursue cases on behalf of White victims.” ”

As with virtually everything that government does , the Voting Rights Act, while race-neutral and necessary at the time , has ceased to function as designed an has been perverted to more sinister ends even as the need for it has dissipated .

This demonstrates very clearly the need to reform the way Congress does business . EVERY BILL they pass should have a “sunset clause” . The politicians create one legislative monster after another , each of which generates it’s own unique class of bureaucratic overseers . And each new creation , in just a few short years of existence , whether effective at their assigned task or not , morphs into another head on the Hydra that is seemingly invincible .

” – Attorney General Eric Holder was approached by Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King: King complained about cases that Voting Section Chief Chris Coates was bringing. King didn’t like that Coates was willing to use civil rights laws to protect white voters. Coates had brought and managed the New Black Panther voter intimidation case.

Holder greenlighted King: do what was necessary to take care of Coates.

– Attorney General Holder told us that he understood from what others told him that Coates was a divisive and controversial person in the Voting Section and that one concern about Coates was that he “wanted to expand the use of the power of the Civil Rights Division in such a way that it would take us into areas that, though justified, would come at a cost of that which the Department traditionally had done, at the cost of people [that the] Civil Rights Division had traditionally protected. ” ”

The mask slips … ” the people it had traditionally protected ” … this is no longer about EQUAL rights , oh no , we have entered the realm of preferential treatment now . It should be glaringly obvious to the thinking observer that rather than existing to ensure the equal rights of ALL citizens , the Civil Rights Division of Eric Holder’s Justice department has become a punitive , racist tool of the left with which to punish their political foes and provide cover for all manner of felonious behavior on the part of their fellow travelers .

” – The Report: “We found other postings by career Voting Section employees that contained intimidating comments and statements that arguably raised the potential threat of physical violence. For instance, one of the employees wrote the following comment to an article concerning an internal Department investigation of potential misconduct by a Section manager: “Geez, reading this just makes me want to go out and choke somebody. At this point, I’d seriously consider going in tomorrow and hanging a noose in someone’s office to get myself fired, but they’d probably applaud the gesture and give me a promotion for doing it….” ”

“threats of violence” … from our “civil servants” …ponder that and read the whole thing …

” LG Chem Michigan, which received a $150-million federal grant in 2009 and more than $175 million in state and local tax relief, has not sold any battery cells to automakers, but has paid more than $1.6 million to workers who volunteered for animal shelters and charitable groups and watched movies and played video games or cards, according to a report an inspector general for the U.S. Department of Energy released today.

“We found that work performed under the grant to LG Chem Michigan had not been managed effectively,” wrote Gregory Friedman, the DOE inspector general. “Our review revealed that LG Chem Michigan inappropriately claimed and was reimbursed for labor charges incurred by a variety of supervisory and staff employees for activities that did not benefit the project.”

The department reimbursed the company for questionable labor costs incurred in the third quarter of 2012, but Friedman was unable to calculate the exact loss to the government because LG Chem Michigan did not track labor activities in detail.”

When it comes to scams , the most pertinent question to ask is ” Who Benefited ? ”

Over a hundred million taxpayer dollars and no batteries yet ?

” Other findings included that:

• The plant has not yet made battery cells that could be used in electric vehicles sold to the public.

• Only about 60% of the capacity agreed to when the grant was received was constructed, even though nearly $142 million of $151 million of the Energy Department’s share of the project’s funding had been spent.

• LG Chem Michigan officials estimated that the government would need to spend $22 million more to complete the five production lines called for in the agreement, an amount that would significantly exceed the remaining funds available.

• LG Chem Michigan had significantly underestimated labor costs.

• Documentation to support the grant indicated that production of battery cells would transition from LG Chem’s South Korean facility to the Michigan plant beginning in 2012, but that didn’t happen.

• Fewer than half of the 440 expected jobs had been created to support the project.”

“The Republican senator leading the inquest into Fast & Furious said he has a mixed reaction to the Sept. 19 Justice Department Inspector General report on the operation that day.

“Operation Fast and Furious was the height of irresponsibility on the part of a number of people from the ATF Phoenix field office all the way up to the Justice Department headquarters,” said Charles E. “Chuck” Grassley (R.-Iowa), who with Rep. Darrell E. Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is trying to piece together the facts as to what really happened inside the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives program that facilitated the flow of illegally purchased firearms into the hands of Mexican crime organizations.